Britain’s Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall attends the 40th Anniversary of the Falkland Conflict in Portsmouth, Britain July 20, 2022. Eddie Mulholland/Pool via REUTERS
LONDON, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Once called a “Rottweiler” by the woman she replaced, Camilla, the second wife of the new British king, Charles, may never have fully won over the public but she is now Queen Consort, holding a title few would have thought conceivable 25 years ago.
When Charles’s first wife, the popular, glamorous Princess Diana, died aged 36 in a car crash in Paris in 1997, Camilla was depicted by the media as the most hated woman in Britain, someone who could never marry Charles, let alone become queen.
Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. Diana had blamed Camilla, often portrayed as staid and dowdy, for wrecking her marriage and the now 75-year-old Camilla has perennially been compared with Charles’s photogenic first wife.
But Charles and Camilla did marry in 2005, and since then she has come to be recognised, albeit grudgingly by some, as a key member of the royal family, whose calming effect on her husband has helped him deal with his role.
“I’d suffer anything for you. That’s love. That’s the strength of love,” Camilla told Charles in a secretly recorded telephone conversation publicised in 1993.
Any lingering doubts about her future status were finally dispelled on the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, in February this year, when Elizabeth gave her blessing to Camilla taking the title Queen Consort, saying it was her “sincere wish” that she do so.
“As we have sought together to serve and support Her Majesty and the people of our communities, my darling wife has been my own steadfast support throughout,” Charles said at the time.
AFFLUENT
Born Camilla Shand in 1947 into an affluent family – her father was an army major and wine merchant who married an aristocrat – she grew up on a country estate and was educated in London before going to the Mon Fertile finishing school in Switzerland and then the Institut Britannique in France.
She moved in social circles that brought her into contact with Charles, who she met on a windswept polo field in the early 1970s.
“His world turned upside down and I don’t think he ever really recovered from it,” said Christopher Wilson, author of a book on the couple’s relationship.
